The Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick - January 14The Zombie Wilson Diaries - Timothy Long (aka GT's own Crusis) - February 26The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time - Book One) - Robert Jordan - April 28American Gods - Neil Gaiman - June 3Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card - June 18The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time - Book Two) - Robert Jordan - July 20The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time - Book Three) - Robert Jordan - August 12The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time - Book Four) - Robert Jordan - September 14The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time - Book Five) - Robert Jordan - October 20My Appetite for Destruction - Steven Adler - October 31Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time - Book Six) - Robert Jordan - December 26

1. Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll by Charles R. Cross (book)2. Desert Places by Blake Crouch (Kindle)3. Phantoms by Jo Nesbo (Kindle)4. Ratlines by Stuart Neville (k)5. Abandon by Blake Crouch (k)6. The Last Child by John Hart (k)7. The King of Lies by John Hart (k)8. Down River by John Hart (k)9. Iron House by John Hart (k)10. Horns by Joe Hill11. Extinction Machine by Jonathan Mayberry12. Bad Glass by Richard F. Gropp13. We the Animals by Justin Torres14. City of the Sun by David Levien15. Where the Dead Lay by David Levien16. 13 Million Dollar Pop by David Levien17. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn18. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn19. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn20. Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride21. Flashback by Dan Simmons (DNF)22. Dying Light by Stuart McBride23. Two Graves by Preston & Child24. Broken Skin by Stuart MacBride25. Flesh House by Stuart MacBride

Books Finished===========The Way of Kings by Brandon SandersonUnder The Dome by Stephen KingPushing Ice by Alistair ReynoldsSandstorm by James RollinsTheft of Swords by Michael J. SullivanSplit Second by David Baldacci

Currently Reading=============The Courts of Chaos by Roger ZelaznyThe Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan & Brandon SandersonFirst Counsel by Brad MeltzerRise of Empire by Michael J. SullivanThe Map of The Sky by Felix J. Palma

« Last Edit: March 18, 2014, 08:54:00 AM by EddieA »

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"Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip? To get to the same side." - The Big Bang Theory

Trying to finish up book 4 of ASoFaI, but it's slow going with all these games.

Finished up book 4 and it's a bit of a drag until the last quarter or so. really sets up some good conflicts for book 5. taking a break to catch up on some others I have bought.

finished up John Dies at the End. quirky book and I left with a highly disjointed impression of the story due to taking a break (Game of Thrones, hello!), but the story was pretty interesting. I like the genre this falls into, like Neil Gaimans work, with a hint of Pratchett thrown in as well.

I have to decide which to start on now. Rise of the Governor is a good choice with the rest of The Walking Dead starting soon. I also have Odd Thomas and Under the Dome. and eventually Dance with Dragons

Trying to finish up book 4 of ASoFaI, but it's slow going with all these games.

Finished up book 4 and it's a bit of a drag until the last quarter or so. really sets up some good conflicts for book 5. taking a break to catch up on some others I have bought.

The trick is that the first half of Book 5 is the same timeline as Book 4, just with all the cool kids that were missing from Book 4. You don't start moving into undiscovered timelines until halfway through.

Trying to finish up book 4 of ASoFaI, but it's slow going with all these games.

Finished up book 4 and it's a bit of a drag until the last quarter or so. really sets up some good conflicts for book 5. taking a break to catch up on some others I have bought.

The trick is that the first half of Book 5 is the same timeline as Book 4, just with all the cool kids that were missing from Book 4. You don't start moving into undiscovered timelines until halfway through.

Which is precisely why the first 3/4 of the book is particularly dull.

This is a collection of essays by historians about the failure of various air forces over the 20th century. While the highlights that most people know about from the major players in WWII, it also covers some of the lesser known failures from the Second World War. For modern times, it covers the Argentines in the Falklands and the Arab Air Forces.

It was a much deeper treatise than most light histories, and a good addition to the library. It has plenty of depth in terms of recommended reading and deeper investigations into the organizations listed.

An excellent view of the Airlift, the powers behind it, and the people that flew it and benefited from it.

One of the interesting things that I gleaned from it was that East Berlin was industrially dependent on West Berlin for materials to keep their factories running. Stalin had been led to believe that East Germany and East Berlin were self sufficient, and would suffer no ill effects from their blockade. While the impacts to West Berlin were far and away the worst, The Russians were in no position to keep East Berlin functioning during the counter blockade imposed by the Allies.

This is published by the History Office of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command. As such, it goes into a fair detail about the structure, organization, and location of the headquarters of the Army MI groups throughout the years.

I doubt many people that are non-military aficionados would care to read through it. It's under 200 pages, and, of course, full of pictures, but can be kind of dry.

in the same sub-genre of Day by Day Armageddon. First-person journal style story telling. Like all good apoc fiction, the characters you meet are what keep the story interesting. He did a pretty good job with the main character and some of the side characters as well. He's not a soldier but he's a good survivor. I liked the early stages of the outbreak as I like seeing how different authors forecast the fall of civilization. Sadly, this is a translation from Spanish, and the other 2 books are un translated at this point.

The Walking Dead: Rise of the GovernorRobert KirkmanYou get a good perspective on the Governor's mental state and get a nice look at early outbreak days in the TWD lore. Not the highest quality writing tbh, but it's adequate. I think this would have made a better graphic novel as I think it's more Kirkman's strength. Recommended for fans of the graphic novels or the show. Not so much for general zombie fiction.

Beyond the BarriersLong, Timothy W.While the main character is a bit overpowered at times, he's likable and well written. I like the different spin on the zombies and the focus on group survival. It has some shocking moments which keeps each setpiece from becoming predictable. Recommend for fans of the genre.

continuing with the post apoc fiction, I am reading this now:Second Shift - Order Howey, HughBook 6 was something of a setback after the highlight of books 4 and 5, but it sets up the sequel in a way necessary for the scope of the book. Haven't finished yet, but it's nice to see a few different takes on the world in the Silos and how certain characters live through it all. The Wool series paints a picture of the apocalypse unlike any I have read. (although parallels can surely be found in other novels)

It's a quick hitter of an autobiography that chronicles her life, moving in circles with the big names of Hollywood, but also serves as a story of her alcoholism and redemption through the Sinclair method.

This is a first-hand account of the codebreakers that were part of the government from 1919-1929 before its destruction at the hands of Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson ("Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."), and the setting up of the organization

It covers the gamut from secret ink, ciphers, and codes over the years covering wartime espionage and diplomatic cables.Parts of it can be rather dry, as he quotes extensively at times from these diplomatic cables, but it is still an excellent read into the history of codes and codebreaking, more in depth than the stuff most of us toyed with as children.

Serving in Iraq, O'Hern was the director of the Strategic Counterintelligence Directorate in Baghdad in 2005.

His book covers the specifics of what, to me, has become the same old story: political storytelling trumps facts on the ground, the armed forces prefer technology to actual human intelligence gathering, and information sharing between different groups is more the exception than the rule.

I did learn a few things from the book such as details about the arms, equipment and training coming out of Iran to impact the war zone. But for someone that's read a lot about military history in a post WWII environment, there's not much new here. The conclusions, appear to be sound, but the environment isn't going to change without a strong shift in the leadership.

Saw it at the library on a walkthrough and picked it out. Not being the strongest in the finer points of natural history, some of it was punching a bit above my weight in the subject, but I enjoyed stretching a little bit. As you would expect, it's chock full of Darwin references, but also covers a wide variety of historical figures to boot,

One thing I find interesting that I probably need to explore more is the history of science. How did we get to where we are now before all of the scientific discoveries required university or corporate labs to find?

For now, I've got a bunch more history books on deck. On to learning about the rise of Germany as a world power.

I know there are a few Joe Ledger fans here, and I'm surprised to see no mention of Jonathan Maberry's newest addition to the series Extinction Machine. It was released at the end of March and I have a copy sitting on the kitchen bar at home, but I first need to make it through finals before I take the full plunge. My wife already tore through it and I can't wait to spend the first few days of my summer "vacation" relaxing by the pool with Ledger's next mission.

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Beauty is only skin deep. Which is why I take very good care of my skin.

"I stood among the heaps of [Japanese]dead. They lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out. The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing."

Finished Extinction Machine while traveling to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The dialogue, character interactions, and emotional impact all continue to meet and often exceed all expectations associated with the series, but I wasn't quite as enamored with the overall story arc. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the story, but it falls a little short of the bar set by Assassin's Code. Still another great entry in the Joe Ledger series.

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Beauty is only skin deep. Which is why I take very good care of my skin.

Just finished Extinction Machine by Maberry and thoroughly enjoyed it. It definitely wasn't my favorite Joe Ledger novel, but typical Ledger and I can't get enough of that! Not sure what to read Next. I'm kind of interested in reading a book about Vikings as I just finished season 1 of the History channel show which absolutely rocked.

Wow, was this country lousy with Soviet agents during the period during the 30s-50s.

A major focus of the book is the Venona project of decrypted Soviet cables. Included in the book are examinations of the actions of Oppenheimer, the Rosenbergs, and even why Einstein wasn't permitted full clearance into the Manhattan Project. It also explores the weaknesses of political figures and the US agencies in their inability or unwillingness to act against their own employees when receiving reports of internal espionage, and how that likely made the Red Scare of the 50s even worse and made it so politicized.

All in all, an excellent read and one that definitely made the postwar period a bit more interesting than it was when covered in HS.

Finished Two Graves, the most recent entry in the Pendergast series by Preston and Child. I'm sorry to say that the series has grown a little stale for me. I wanted to see how the "Helen/Der Bund" trilogy would conclude, but I felt like I was reading more out of obligation than enjoyment.

As I'm about to take a weekend trip to a lake in the mountains to escape the heat (expected to hit 117F this weekend, but temps in the "high country" will be around 90F during the day, 60F overnight), I'm going to need something to read and am currently without a backlog. While browsing at the local library, I stumbled upon a series I had not yet heard of by an author named Jeremy Robinson. It's called the "Chess Team" series and involves an anti-terrorism special forces unit along similar lines to James Rollins' Sigma Series and Maberry's Joe Ledger series. The cover lists praise from Rollins himself, and the storyline resembles two of my favorite series (Sigma and Joe Ledger), so I'm going to give it a shot. The first book is Pulse and it is followed by Instinct. I grabbed both in case they're quick reads. We'll see if my discovery was dumb luck or a Rollins/Maberry rip-off.

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Beauty is only skin deep. Which is why I take very good care of my skin.

Finished Pulse by Jeremy Robinson and was surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. Already almost finished with the 2nd book in the series, Instinct, and plan to blow through any others I can find as well. If you enjoy the Joe Ledger and/or Sigma series, I'd recommend Robinson's Chess Team series as well. Fun stuff.

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Beauty is only skin deep. Which is why I take very good care of my skin.

Finished Clickers 2: The Next Wave by J F Gonzalez and Brian Keene. WTF is Clickers? Why is there a sequel to a book I never heard of? And who the hell is J F Gonzalez?

So about 8 or so years ago I heard about this cult horror novel Clickers. The premise seemed pretty damn fun - a bunch of giant crab like creatures attack a small town in Maine. Then something far worse comes out of the sea. The set up seems to have all the Stephen King tropes and this book is a bit of a cult horror novel. So I bought it and read it. And boy was it a huge let down. J F Gonzalez is a terrible writer. The main character wasn't that interesting or likable, a horror writer of all things, and the horror sequences were pretty poorly written on par with some of the worst made for SyFy movies.

I finished the novel but promptly forgot about it until recently when Amazon suggested Clickers 3 as a read. Three??? He wrote a sequel to this mediocre novel, and then another one after it? That's shit crazy. And what was even crazier was the second book was getting great write ups. What is up with this shit? Well $8 later and I found out what was up with that shit.

Clickers 2 is damn awesome. I mean I was page turning like crazy, or the ebook equivalent, and could not stop reading this thing. It starts off good with some interesting news clipping to build tension and then takes off in a full blown zombie apocalypse style novel, except with these Volkswagen Bug sized crab creatures in the place of zombies, who are just tearing the shit out of the US. I was not expecting that at all.

Then about 65% of the way in I think J F Gonzalez stepped in and told Brian Keene he wanted to take a crack at writing his novel. Ugh. He introduced probably one of the stupidest versions of the President of the United States I've read. Just terrible. Then he wrote up what was supposed to be a rousing speech by another character that fell so flat I vocalized my displeasure. Then what drove me up the wall was all the other characters in the book were blown away by the speech. I had to stop reading at this point and take a step back and readjust my expectations.

At this point I basically had to stop my vision of this being a Grade A blockbuster and picture another made for SyFy movie. I was then able to finish the book with those expectations in place. And it still had its moments. But man it was such a let down after being so good for so long. You could almost tell when the authors switched writing tasks as there was such a difference in quality.

In any case I went ahead and got Clickers 3. And its pretty terrible. They had a good idea with keeping the setup for each book unique. The first Clickers was the Stephen King small town craziness. The second Clickers was zombie apocalypse. And the third Clickers is Lovecraftian in nature. But while the setup of the third book is salvageable it goes to pot quickly with terrible writing, dumb characters, and throwing unbelievable shit at you - and this is a novel with huge ass crabs running around in it so it's pretty damn unbelievable. I'm having a hard time finishing it but will eventually get there.

There's also another Clickers novel. Clickers vs Zombies. I may wait another 8 years to tackle that one.

Reading "Rubicon" by Tom Holland about the fall of the Roman Empire Republic. It is a very good read and a real page turner. Some history books can tend to bog down a bit but this is a great recounting of what happened. Highly recommended.

wanted to go to near future SF and picked up Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey, a pen name of two other writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. It was a good read and featured a great set of characters. the two leads are far apart in personality and clash as much as they work together. there's a strong sense of history and political strife under the conflicts and seems as plausible as any of Ben Bova's inter-planetary works. first of three in the setting with the other two already published. going to pick them up at some point after I read The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapowski

the Kindle edition had an included novel by Abraham and while it's more high fantasy, it has a ASoIaF-like approach to the world. it's not as deep as Martin, but it does manage to keep the action and intrigue moving along.

Reading "Rubicon" by Tom Holland about the fall of the Roman Empire Republic. It is a very good read and a real page turner. Some history books can tend to bog down a bit but this is a great recounting of what happened. Highly recommended.

This sounds great, added it to my Goodreads list.

Now for my update. Since reading the last Ledger novel I've finished:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman: This is only my second Gaiman novel (American God's being the first) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is quiet short, but I feel I got my moneys worth and it's basically a modern day fairy tale.

Path Of The Assassin (Scot Harvath #2) by Brad Thor: I enjoyed this every bit as much as Lions of Lucerne. Great series, and I'm so glad there are now 12 books total, including the latest which is a #1 at Amazon currently.

The Last Child by John Hart: This was excellent and I've now added all Hart's other books to my must read list.